-The Hoot The brutally fatal silencing of three journalists along with the sharp rise in censorship of content in online media and the increasing cases of defamation marked the deterioration of the climate for free speech across India in 2011. Attacks on journalists continued to be high, with 24 recorded instances even as writers, journalists and lawyers bore the brunt of the intolerance of vigilante groups to dissenting opinion. The Free Speech...

A Dantewada district court yesterday granted bail to D.V.C.S. Verma, the general manager of an Essar Steel plant, who was Arrested last September in a case of alleged protection pay to Maoists. The court said investigators had not been able to provide any concrete evidence against the official. Chhattisgarh police had Arrested Verma based on the statement of a local contractor, B.K. Lala, who was allegedly caught red-handed while paying Rs 15...

-The Times of India After registering five FIRs in National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam, the Central Bureau of Investigation is now moving ahead and has Arrested Former Uttar Pradesh bureaucrat P K Jain on Thursday. In another development, sources said that they are planning to book P K Jain and other accused persons in disproportionate assets case. Jain has been Arrested in the case in which sacked BSP leader Babu Singh...

If you are a resident of Madhya Pradesh, Muslim and poor, nowhere close to the class of nawabs who can pay for murg musallam or mutton raan, watch your pot! The BJP government, led by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has just armed itself with a big danda ostensibly to protect the holy cow and its progeny. But, make no mistake, it’s a stick to beat you with. To save your...

It’s not only the Calcutta business chambers that have come out in support of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s (Ficci) reproachful stand on the way the Bengal government is handling investigations into the AMRI fire tragedy. Closer home, Federation of Jharkhand Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FJCCI) also feels that the police action against seven directors of AMRI Hospitals, Dhakuria, “was not completely non-discriminatory”. A day after Bengal...